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Bush lashed out at Democrats today, accusing them of being soft on national defense and suggesting they don't have the stomach to fight his silly War on Terror. In response, scientists moved the Cleland Clock ahead three hours.

Since 2000, the Cleland Clock has been a valuable tool to predict when former U.S. Senator and Vietnam War Hero Max Cleland will be wheeled out to denounce the GOP chickenhawks for the cowards they are, or when his name will be invoked by Democrat leaders as evidence of the pointless sacrifices they've made for this imperialist aggressor nation in illegal and immoral wars.

Today’s adjustment will bring the clock to 11:45 pm, the closest it has been to midnight since the 2004 elections, when Cleland’s severed arm and leg both pointed straight up at 12 o’clock right up until the polls were closed.

The lion in the jungle makes every other animal sit up and take notice as soon as he lets out a roar. He didn't get that way through artificial paraphernalia or through springs and wires and trick dumbells. He became the king of the jungle through constant natural use of every muscle in his body.
- Charles Atlas

Liberal Democrats are a peaceful people, highly intelligent yet slow to anger even when provoked by the infuriating stupidity of your average American. But confront us with annoying questions that your feeble minds can’t even begin to comprehend the answers to, and you will hear us roar like lions, drowning out all else.

After six years of politely staying out of the spotlight, the camera-shy Bill Clinton has finally had his fill of brainless conservative morons who take nothing he says at face value. No longer will he sit idly by while minions of the Right-Wing Propaganda Machine ask him to explain what the hell he did for the whole 8 years he was in office. His royal dressing-down of that Faux News Nazi is just a taste of what’s in store for those who would use his record as president to cloud his legacy

Don’t let his name fool you. ChriSHitler Wallace is not a fair and balanced journalist like his father. As evident by his failure to sit on Bill Clinton’s lap and make little cooing sounds whenever he spoke, Wallace is little more than a right-wing hack. But to even suggest that the former president somehow allowed the man responsible for the 9/11 attacks to slip from his grasp is the height of insanity.

Had he any inking that Bush was going to fly planes into those buildings just to launch an illegal and immoral war for oil so he could line the pockets of his Halliburton buddies, Clinton would have done everything in his power to stop him. Perhaps his only mistake was that he was too busy trying to get Osama Bin Laden to worry about what the alcoholic Governor of Texas was doing. In fact, he was in the process of scrounging up enough loose change from under his sofa cushions to launch a CIA and FBI investigation into whether OBL was a bad guy, with hsi full support and cooperation as long as the agencies didn’t communicate with one another, eavesdrop on any terrorists, or interrupt any of his blow jobs. In fact, it was a top priority on his to-do-list, right after signing a few hundred last-minute, legacy-sealing executive orders, and then a pile of pardons for coke dealers and campaign contributors.

So the old Right-Wing canard that Democrats are soft on national defense won’t float this election year. Bill Clinton and his entire cabinet took the terrorist threat very seriously, and Sandy Berger’s trousers are stuffed full of documents to prove it. The poor man has paper cuts on his testicles that will never heal.

It's less than two months until the November elections, and RepugniKKKans are finding it difficult to conceal their true racist colors.

It seems that while Bush went AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard to drag Black men to death behind his pick-up truck, Virginia Senator George Allen (R) was spewing racial epiphets around his college campus like a busted sewer main. According to some of his University of Virginia classmates, Allen used the N-Word frequently in the 1970’s, and without wearing the appropriate amount of bling.

Allen insists that while he did indeed use the N-Word, it was only in the process of "bustin' some rhymes" with his homies, Sen. Robert Byrd and Gov. George Wallace, and that they all displayed the regulation amount of bling. The Black Community, for which I am the self-appointed voice of, remains unconvinced by his explanation. Such esteemed Democrat leaders would never associate with a known racist.

He called Bush the “devil”. He denounced the U.S. imperialist regime and railed against the CIA’s covert plot to supplant him. Then, after Sean Penn was finished speaking, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had a few choice words for Bush as well.

What a breath of fresh air! What a treat it was to finally see someone stand up to the Bush junta and its imperialist masters who think they can pile huge sums of cash onto Third World countries and get something in return. Granted everything he said has been said before by a Democrat leader or progressive celebrity, but never so passionately and unapologetically blunt. What courage it took for Chavez to come here and voice his patriotic dissent against the government, when you can be imprisoned or shot as an Enemy of the People for doing the same thing in Venezuela. And you’d deserve it to, you CIA stooge!

The Right-Wing Noise Makers will probably dismiss his entire speech as the ranting of a megalomaniacal lunatic with googly eyes and delusions of grandeur, but the veracity of every word out of Chavez’s mouth is confirmed in Chomsky’s brilliant book. Need I remind my readers that not only is Noam Chomsky a superhuman sex machine, but he’s also possesses godlike intelligence. He's a tenured Professym at MIT, has made a fortune penning lucrative books slamming the evils of capitalism, and he gives long, turgid lectures that any self-respecting intellectual would be afraid to admit they don't understand. He's brilliant! BRILLIANT! Brilliant people never lie, and there’s no such thing as an intelligent lunatic. I’m living proof of that.

Judging by his extremist positions against abortion and gay marriage, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the Pope is a hatemonger as well. Quoting from an ancient text, the leader of the most barbaric religion in the history of the world accused Islam of being "evil", and "inhuman". Once again, Catholics have demonstrated that they just can't get out of the Dark Ages.

Muslims are a deeply sensitive people and their feelings are easily hurt, but Islamist leaders across the world took to the airwaves and beseeched their followers to refrain from acts of violence and instead walk the path of peace. Although the pontiff’s words were reminiscent of Hitler back before he redeemed himself by killing 6 million Jews in an imaginary Holocaust, they were only words and no excuse for harming innocents. Once an appropriate amount of churches had been burned and enough nuns brutally gunned down, Muslims and infidels could co-exist in peace and harmony.

The Pope, on the other hand, seems determined to start a Holy War. His half-assed apology was too little, too late, and didn’t include anywhere near the amount of groveling Muslims have grown to expect from Europeans. Nor did he mention that he was willing to accept punishment for his cruel attack on the peacelove Muslim peoples. Under Sharia law, anyone who even indirectly implies that Islam is anything less than "peachy keen" can only be forgiven once they’ve been decapitated, disemboweled, and then trampled to death by a herd of unwashed goats. The Pope is probably too much of a bigot to accept such an olive branch, but there is an alternative. He could convert to Islam.

I know he’s got it pretty good with this Holy See gig. He's got a big house, a fancy car, and more money than he knows what to do with. But the Pope should try thinking about someone besides himself for a change.

The raccoon’s disgusting, bloated carcass made a wheezing sound as I poked it with the stick. I watched as it floated across the brackish water and came to a rest between Rachel Corrie’s concrete thighs.

It'd been a long, emotional week full of heartache and sorrow at Evergreen State College, and now there was a dead raccoon floating in our 9/11 Reflection Pond. Students erected the tiny pool shortly after the “attacks” to honor those who lost their lives as a result of Bush’s pro-Israel policies. Little did they know that Bush would use it as roadkill receptacle. I suppose it was his twisted way of warning me that I was getting too close to the truth about what really happened on 9/11.

Everyone knows it was an inside job. But I've only recently come to understand how deeply inside it really is. Let's take a quick look at some of the facts:

1. The Pentagon. Charlie Sheen and other members of the Brat Pack have already concluded that the lack of any debris or human remains at the crash site proves it was not a commercial aircraft that hit the Pentagon. That means everyone aboard doomed American Airlines Flight 77 – the pilot, the crew, and the passengers - never died in that crash. So where are they? Who knows? Perhaps they’re all relaxing on a beach in Tahiti, enjoying the millions they were awarded in insurance money for their staged deaths.

2. United 93. It’s a known fact that cell phones will not work on commercial aircraft due to a magical forcefield that surrounds the entire hull. Yet the families of those who “died” on United Airlines Flight 93 claim to have received phone calls from their loved ones in the moments leading up to the crash. One must therefore conclude that either the families are lying about the calls, or the calls were never made from that plane. In either case, both the passengers and their families had to have been in on it. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re all at the beach with the Flight 77 jokers, having a good laugh on all of us.

3. The World Trade Center. Anyone who has ever seen two skyscrapers hit by planes knows that they don’t pancake in on themselves in a controlled manner. For the towers to come down the way they did, hundreds of implosion engineers would need to spend days, maybe even weeks placing explosives in strategic locations on numerous floors. They’d have to drill holes in the concrete, saw through steel beams, and run a network of wires throughout the entire building. Such a massive project would be next to impossible to perform without being noticed by the thousands of people who worked in the towers every day. So the only explanation is that they were all in on it. Everyone who died in the towers, everyone who survived, every firefighter and every cop who rushed into the burning buildings to “rescue” people - they were all in on it. The passengers on the planes, the pilots, the crew, and the cab drivers that took them to airport were in on it. The people at the ticket counter were in on it. The guys who loaded the luggage onto the fictional planes were in on it. Those dudes who vacuum the carpet and put new barf bags in the seat pockets before you board, and even the food service people were all in on it. The air traffic controllers who tracked the hijacked aircraft were also in on it. Everyone on the ground who claimed to see the planes hit the building, and every TV cameraman who faked footage of the “attack” were in on it, too.

Obviously, the 9/11 conspiracy is of a grander scale than any of us could have possibly imagined. Thousands, if not millions of people had to be in cahoots with Bush in order to pull the whole thing off. In fact, odds are that you’re all in on it as well.

9/11. An occasion not for partisan bickering or political finger-pointing, but a time to honor those who lost their lives while Bush read a story about a pet goat to a bunch of kindergartners. 9/11 should be a National Day of Mourning, reduced to a meaningless slogan and covered by a protective layer of schmaltz. But quicker than Bush knocked down those towers, he was on the boob tube last night exploiting 9/11 for his own advantage.

Democrats were understandably outraged. The Jersey Grrrls took time out from campaigning for John Kerry to blast Bush for politicizing the tragedy. Michael Moore cut short a special screening of Fahrenheit 9/11 at Hugo Chavez’s place. Ted Kennedy was so upset he could hardly keep his car on the road. Bush’s sickening invocation of 9/11 on 9/11, of all days, was a slap in the face of every decent, red-blooded American. And quite a few liberals, too. His insistence on constantly using the attacks (if there actually were any) to justify his illegal and immoral War on Terror not only insults the memory of the fallen, but places Democrat leaders in the awkward position of either siding with America and our troops, or being branded as unpatriotic douchebags. Thus, the 11th of every September becomes little more than a free campaign ad for Republican politicians who consider national defense to be a priority.

The American People deserve better.

In order to preserve our democracy, steps must be taken to create a more level political playing field and restore the Spirit of Bi-Partisanship our Founding Fathers envisioned when they wrote it into the Constitution. The logical course of action would be to abolish 9/11 altogether, jumping straight from 9/10 to 9/12 each year. An extra day could be added to the end of the month to make up for it, or we can put it after April 22nd and turn Earth Day into a two-day affair.

However, in the Spirit of Bipartisanship, Democrats may have to scrap that idea and offer up some sort of compromise. For instance, Repugs could keep their precious 9/11, in exchange for their cooperation in passing a Congressional resolution that would effectively prohibit all right-wing blogs, hate radio jocks, TV pundits, and politicians from speaking or writing about 9/11 in a manner that makes Democrats look like a bunch of limp-wristed weenies more concerned with protecting the enemy’s feelings than the lives of their fellow Americans.

In addition, Bush and other Republicans leaders will refrain from implying in any way that Iraq is a part of the War on Terror. Saddam didn’t attack us. The guys in Iraq who want to chop off our heads, rip out our intestines, dismember our corpses, and then convert us to Islam are an entirely different group of people than the ones who supposedly flew planes into our buildings. Therefore, the War in Iraq is merely a distraction. Since 9/11 happened not in Bagdhad but on our own soil, Bush should confine his silly War on Terror to a 13 block radius in Lower Manhattan.

I’m sure that those who died on that fateful day - if they really did die - would join together with me in the Spirit of Bipartisanship and agree with everything I've said.

Democrat leaders are furious over an upcoming ABC dramatization of the 9/11 tragedy that unfairly portrays President Clinton as too distracted by Monica Lewinsky to pursue Osama Bin Laden. It's clearly a partisan attack, intended to divide Americans at a time they should all be uniting behind Democrats. As President, Bill Clinton was perfectly capable of both defending this nation from terrorists AND ejaculating all over the hired help. That's what true leadership is all about. Madeline Albright and others who worked with The Man from Hope insist that given the opportunity, a court-issued warrant, permission from the International Community, a green-light from the ACLU, and a thumbs-up from the public opinion polls, there's nothing that would have stopped him from going after Osama Bin Laden. They are demanding that ABC scrap the miniseries entirely, for while installing porn filters on library computers will lead us down the path to totalitarianism, censorship to protect Bill Clinton's legacy from right-wing smearmongers is essential for a healthy democracy.

In the spirit of national unity, ABC has agreed to remove any footage that makes Clinton or members of his cabinet look like ineffectual boobs. The new, more historically accurate movie will be five minutes long with 6 hours of commercials. In the drama's only scene, a senile, doddering Ronald Reagan is discouraged from capturing Osama Bin Laden by a domineering Nancy Reagan who, on the advice of her astrologer, instructs him instead to lay flowers on Hitler's grave and then beat up some queers for Jesus.

Democrat leaders concede that while the revised film takes some liberties with the facts, it captures perfectly the essence of the Reagan presidency and should air in its entirety. They furthermore encourage anyone wishing to learn what REALLY went on in the Clinton White House to urge their local libraries remove the porn filters from their computers so they can Read More About It.

I’ve never been too keen on Australians. They’re not quite European enough, and their accents aren't effeminitely homosexual enough for them to be compltely trustworthy in my book. But my right wing, Bible-thumping niece was a huge fan of Steve Irwin, and would take the news of his brutal murder especially hard. So I made it a point to really rub it in.

"I'm surprised you're so happy about it," she said. "He was an environmentalist, like you claim to be."

"Environmentalist?" I snorted with derision. "What part of 'Alligator HUNTER' don't you understand? Granted, he didn't exactly kill any animals, but he certainly made them wish they were dead. Think about all those poor alligators he harassed and humiliated for your amusement. What is it your "Bible" says about that?”

“And God made man in His own image, and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every thing that –“

“DON’T FORCE YOUR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS ON ME!” I screeched, abruptly cutting her sermon short. I was doing her parents a favor by driving her to soccer practice, the least the little brat could do was show some respect for the Constitutional Wall Between Church and My Car.

“Sorry,” she apologized glumly.

“Apology accepted,” I relented. “Actually, it’s funny you should mention it, because in a way your antiquated religious beliefs are partially to blame for the Alligator Hunter’s excruciatingly painful death.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that the stingray was an Evangelical Christian.”

“No, little miss smarty pants," I replied. "But the Shrub is.”

She sighed and stared out the window, watching the trees flash by.

“I don’t want to talk politics with you, Uncle Larry,” she said. “The last time we talked politics, you dumped me off on the turnpike in the pouring rain. I caught the flu and missed a week of school.”

Pooberty. It makes kids all crazy.

“Nonsense,” I snapped, dismissing her negativity. “As a progressive whose politcal philosophy is firmly rooted in logic, I’m not afraid to be subjected to opposing viewpoints, as ignorant and primitive as they may be.”

She eyed me suspiciously.

“And as your Uncle, I feel it’s my responsibility to purge your mind of all the useless propaganda your parents have filled it with, and replace it with cold, hard facts that I've completely made up to back my political ideas. And one of those facts is that Bush's destructive environmental policies are little more than a plot to bring about Armageddon, so Jesus will return and throw everyone who enjoys casual sex into the Lake of Fire.”

“Heyyy! We passed the soccer field!” she whined, dodging the subject.

“Oh come now,” I prodded her. “Surely a fan of George Gershwin knows something about global warming and it’s effect on the ecosystem. Just look at the news. A grizzly bear mauled a woman in Canada last week. A pack of wild squirrels attacked and devoured and entire Boy Scout troop only a few days ago. Now stingrays, which are normally docile creatures, are impaling obnoxious Aussies in their natural habitat. The entire animal kingdom has gone completely wild since Bush refused to ratify Kyoto and force businesses to cut greenhouse gas emissions."

She let that sink in for a moment, then began to belch GOP talking points as if possessed by Rush Limbaugh.

“Well wouldn’t businesses have to slow production down in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions?”

“They might,” I answered, turning the car down a lonely dirt road. “But what’s wrong with a little clean air? Don’t you like to breathe clean air? I sure do.”

“And wouldn't less production mean they‘d have to lay people off in order to stay in business?” she nagged.

“They wouldn’t have to,” I replied, “but they probably would anyway just to protect their precious bottom line. Luckily we have plenty of progressive programs to help working families who are no longer working continue doing so in relative ease and comfort.”

“And who pays for those programs?” she persisted. Goddess…she was so dumb it made MY brain hurt just to listen to her. What had my brother done this poor girl?

“The rich people pay for them, of course,” I assured her. “Once Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent are repealed, they'll be required to pay their Fair Share of everything.”

“But if you put them out of business, they won’t be rich anymore. Then they can't pay your taxes.”

I pulled the car over.

“Well, this is your stop.”

“We’re miles from town!” she cried.

“Then it’ll be the perfect opportunity for you to commune with nature and learn a thing or two about the animal kingdom. I’m sure Frank Gorshin would approve.”

“Daddy said he’d kill you if you ditched me again!” the little fascist threatened me.

“Well, then that’ll be TWO of your idols that your neocon PNAC masters have murdered, won’t it?”

As I left her there choking on my dust, I saw something all too familiar in her beady little reich-wing eyes: pure, unbridled HATE.

This week marked the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which means it’s time for white Americans to look into the mirror and ask themselves what they have done to make life easier for the millions of impoverished Blacks they allowed to drown in New Orleans. The answer is, to put it bluntly, diddly squat. Despite all the promises to rebuild the Chocolate City and restore it to its original chocolatey goodness, houses ripped from their foundations still rest in the middle of the streets, with large crowds of local politicians standing around wondering what Bush is going to do about it. Parts of the Gulf of Mexico are still completely underwater. The thousands who fled Louisiana haven't been offered enough cash incentives to come back, and the grinning skeletons of entire Black families who remained behind carpet the rooftops to this day, patiently waiting for rescue teams that will never come.

We can never completely repay African-Americans for what we did to them in New Orleans, nor can we ever wash the blood of slavery off our hands. But there are meaningless little gestures we can make to show the Black community that we at least care enough to pretend like we give damn about their suffering. Naming a street in your community after Dr. Martin Luther King, for instance. Giving Halle Berry an Oscar. And most importantly, understanding that African Americans are essentially helpless children who need constant nurturing to survive.

About ten years ago, I noticed a homeless African-American man panhandling on the street corner outside my apartment building. Realizing that as a white man I was somehow responsible for his sorry state of affairs, I felt obligated to make amends. So I gave the poor man a crisp ten dollar bill, and he thanked me profusely.

The next day, I passed the same guy begging for change again. I gave him another ten bucks as I walked by. “Blesh you shir,” he slurred. “Gah Blesh you!” I shook my head and reminded him that the money was his by rights. In an anglo-centric system of White Privilege built through the exploitation of African slaves, every dollar a white person earns is essentially stolen from a black person - or from any other minority (except for those damn Asians who are practically house Negroes because they work hard and don't complain).

On third day, the poor guy was still out there on the corner but he didn’t even bother to thank me when I gave him another ten dollars. He just nodded as if he had expected it. Nevertheless, I gave him ten dollars every single day for the next two or three weeks. By the end of the month, rent was due and I was a little short on cash, so I had to skip my reparations payments for a while. Then one afternoon as I was knitting macrame bong sweaters for Hempfest '96, there came a loud pounding on my door.

“LIAR!" he growled back at me. "YOU TOOK ME FROM AFRICA AND BROUGHT ME OVER HERE IN CHAINS! NOW I WANT MY FORTY ACRES AND A MULE!!!”

As a progressive American sensitive to the plight of the oppressed hyphenated peoples, and aware that as a White American I am to totally blame for it, how could I possibly argue with him? I quickly slipped my credit card under the door, and listened as his footsteps dwindled away down the hall.

That was the last I heard from him until a couple weeks ago, when he knocked on my door as I was knitting bong sweaters for Hempfest '06. I looked through the peephole and saw a transformed man. Clean cut, shaven, and wearing a nice suit, he was almost completely indistinguishable from the downtrodden street bum I had met ten years before.

“I want to shake your hand,” he said when I opened the door and greeted him. “Before I met you, I was a broken man, and convinced that I was totally to blame for my condition. But your stup...err, generosity opened my eyes. Thanks to you, I was able to rise up out of the gutter and begin a rewarding and lucrative career transforming white guilt into cold hard cash. Now I'm running for Congress in the State of Maryland, and I'm counting on your support.”

“Of course, Mr. Mfume!" I agreed, beaming with pride. "I'll be more than happy to help in any way I can! I'll campaign, I'll pass out flyers, whatever you want!"

Later that evening, as I crawled onto the mountain of delinquent credit card bills and “pay or vacate notices” I've been sleeping on since I pawned my flotation tank, I congratulated myself on a job well done. In a small way, I had fulfilled my duty as the descendent of people with the same color skin as slave owners to enrich the lives of people with the same color skin as slaves 150 years in the grave.

No longer can the racist great, great, great, great grandchildren of plantation owners use the fact that they weren't even alive during the era of slavery to escape their responsibility for the plight of African-Americans. Hurricane Katrina will make sure of that. Like Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, it will forever serve as an annual booster shot of white guilt.